Tag: Russia

Rangers Lead the Way

KRAMATORSK, Ukraine, June 27 (Reuters) – A Russian missile struck a restaurant in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk on Tuesday, killing at least eight people and wounding 56, emergency services said, as rescue crews combed the rubble in search of casualties... The building was reduced to a twisted web of metal beams. Police and soldiers emerged with a man in military trousers and boots on a stretcher. He was placed in an ambulance, though it was unclear whether he was still alive.

From Twitter:

Kramatorsk. After an alleged tip off from local informants a hotel with AFU and foreign merc’s was hit. Survivors have being filmed talking with American accents. Perhaps they were on vacation.

A reader at AC’s points out that the tattoo looks very much like a historical Rangers Diamond. Which, in this case, suggests that the 3rd Ranger Battalion is already deployed in eastern Ukraine.

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Of Course They Knew

The US government knew about the Wagner “rebellion” days in advance because the whole thing was most likely orchestrated by the color revolutionaries.

US intelligence officials knew well in advance that Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin was planning to mount an armed rebellion against the Russian military’s top commanders. Congressional leaders were even briefed days prior to Saturday’s events, after US intelligence reportedly observed the mercenary firm mustering forces and amassing weapons in preparation for possibly making a move against the defense ministry.

Any time there is a coup or revolution or color revolution, it’s a certain sign that the neoclowns are waging war by bank transfer again.

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Debacle in Rostov

Warren Balogh also observes a few obvious things about the short-lived threat that a mercenary company would change sides in response to a lucrative offer:

So let me get this straight

1. Prigozhin, the leader of the mutiny, is Jewish.

2. Standing ‘directly behind him.’ according to Russian nationalist Igor Clrkn, is Sergey Kiryenko, Putin’s Deputy Chief of Staff, who also happens to be Jewish and the grandson of a highly decorated Jewish Bolshevik Cheka terrorist

3. This comes just as the big offensive is being launched from Ukraine, under the Jewish junta of Vladimir Zelensky

4. All this is happening against the backdrop of Russa building closer ties to Iran, which threatens Israel.

5. The flag of the Wagner mercenary corps Is being hoisted in Ukraine.

6. Anne Applebaum, the biggest Jewish neocon war hawk against Russa at the Atlantic, is calling this Putin’s Tzar Nicholas moment.

The whole thing smacks of desperation on the part of Clown World. I wouldn’t be even remotely surprised if Prigozhin’s disastrous attempt to switch sides was related to that $6 billion in US funds that was recently reported to have gone missing. But, in retrospect, the attempt was always doomed.

There is no force on this Earth that can survive Jim Cramer’s cheerleading. Not even when he spells the name wrong.

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The Wagner “Coup”

Simplicius reviews a few theories concerning the failed insurrection in Russia by the Wagner mercenary company.

Let’s explore a few possible options for what could actually be going on.

  1. Prigozhin is working with AFU/SBU/CIA to backstab and destroy Russia, coordinating his actions with them.
  2. Prigozhin is secretly working with Putin to remove the stodgily entrenched Russian command. Notice, not in a single one of his rants has Prigozhin accused Putin or so much as even mentioned his name. There’s a possibility that all this is theater to cause a “conciliatory deal” to be made which will result in the ‘stepping aside’ of Shoigu. Putin has previously “laterally promoted” (in actuality demotions) several big name siloviki in the past. For instance, Sergei Ivanov who was deputy prime minister and presidential chief of staff was “moved” to head some ‘ecological’ department. Could we see Shoigu used as a fig leaf to settle the impasse by “laterally” moving him to some other ostensibly ‘important’ (but actually irrelevant) position?
  3. Everything is actually “as is” and whatever we see on the surface of the conflict pretty much represents what’s really happening.

One last thing to mention. There is still the possibility this is all some kind of elaborate psyop. Anything is possible because the situation is simply so ‘out of left field’. The reason it’s out of left field to me in particular is Prigozhin really did not appear to have any substantive justification for any of this. As I said, Russia was crushing the AFU and has recently been in the best position of the entire SMO. Why would something like this happen now, if it were legitimate? It simply defies belief that Prigozhin would be so incensed about all the “failings” of the MOD at the time of the MOD’s singularly greatest glory on the battlefield. The only explanation in that case would be—as I said before—that Prigozhin knew his time was up as the MOD was already planning on canning him, so it was “now or never” for him.

My theory is considerably more simple and is based on “Every Single Time.”

Yevgeny Prigozhin was born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) 1 June 1961. His father and stepfather were of Russian-Jewish descent.

In other words, Prigozhin is a sleeper agent for Clown World who was activated as a desperate reaction to the abject failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive.

I can cite precisely zero evidence supporting this theory, but it’s certainly more coherent and consistent with historical events than the “he just went crazy” or “Russian psyop” theories. I don’t think it’s particularly far-fetched to suggest that the man’s true sympathies lie with his co-ethnics presently ruling over the Ukrainian people, especially in light of the Western response to Prigozhin’s announced “coup”.

The US has postponed a fresh round of economic sanctions on the Wagner private military company after its leader, Evgeny Prigozhin, led a march on Moscow in defiance of the Kremlin, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing sources.

UPDATE: Simplicius appears to have come around to my way of thinking.

My other more sinister theory is born: The entire production was in fact an oligarch-funded, perhaps Western-backed coup that was meant to topple Putin. Shoigu and Gerasimov were merely the cover to convince Wagner troops to march on the Kremlin. You see, Shoigu provides a brilliantly convenient target because troops are disgruntled with him. So all Priggy had to do was tell his troops we’re going to take out Shoigu and hand over the reins to Putin and it was easy convincing.

However, this may have always been a performance. You see, once the troops were to have marched to the Kremlin with him, he could position a few thousand of them as a cordon around the Kremlin itself. Then, a much smaller vanguard of his absolute most trustworthy, diehard, and fanatical revolutionaries—Dmitry Utkin surely has these under him—would have walked into the Kremlin with Prigozhin under the guise of “going to arrest Shoigu”.

But the next time the outside Wagner troops would see Prigozhin emerge from the Kremlin would be on the balcony, hailing them with the crown on his head as the new ruler of Russia. Because the idea all along was to use this facade to overthrow Putin and take control for himself.

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Not Meeting Expectations on Any Front

After months of predicted success and weeks of asserted success, the media narrative is finally beginning to accept the obvious fact of a failed Ukrainian offensive:

Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensive against Russian forces is “not meeting expectations on any front,” Western and US officials told CNN on Thursday. Ukrainian troops and armor are proving “vulnerable” to Russian minefields, missiles, and air power, they added.

“Russian lines of defense have been proving well-fortified, making it difficult for Ukrainian forces to breach them,” CNN reported, paraphrasing the anonymous officials. “In addition, Russian forces have had success bogging down Ukrainian armor with missile attacks and mines and have been deploying air power more effectively.”

According to one official, the Russian defense has proven more “competent” than expected. However, the source insisted that the US is still “optimistic” that Ukraine will turn the failing operation around, and that Washington will re-evaluate the offensive next month.

Ukraine’s counteroffensive began on June 4 with a failed attack on Russian positions near Donetsk, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. Waves of attacks followed along the Donetsk and Zaporozhye sectors of the front line, all of which the entrenched Russian forces have managed to withstand, the ministry claimed.

The attacks have reportedly cost the Ukrainian military dearly. With their dwindling number of air defense systems weakened by Russian drones and missiles, Kiev’s forces have been unable to counter Russian jets and helicopters. Relying on armored thrusts through minefields, Ukraine lost over 13,000 troops and more than 800 tanks and armored vehicles between June 4 and 21, Russian Security Council chief Nikolay Patrushev stated on Thursday.

The US will be “optimistic” right down to the last Ukrainian. But, as Scott Ritter observes, it’s hard to be successful on the real battlefield if you’re going to build false assumptions into your training and simulation models.

Ukraine sent one of its best brigades into combat earlier this month as part of its long-awaited counteroffensive aimed at retaking areas controlled by Russian forces.

Leading the charge near the town of Orekhov, in Zaporozhye Region, was the 47th Mechanized Brigade, armed with NATO equipment and – most importantly – employing it using the US-led bloc’s combined arms doctrine and tactics. Prior to the operation, this brigade spent months at a base in Germany learning “Western know-how” in combined-arms warfare.

Helping them prepare for the fighting to come was KORA, the German-made NATO computer simulation system, designed to allow officers and non-commissioned officers to closely replicate battlefield conditions and, in doing so, better develop ideal courses of action against a designated enemy – in this case, Russia.

If there was ever an example of how a purpose-built Ukrainian NATO proxy force would perform against a Russian enemy, the 47th Brigade was the ideal case study. However, within days of initiating its attack, the group was close to literally decimated, with more than 10% of the over 100 US-made M-2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles destroyed or abandoned on the field of battle, and hundreds of the brigade’s 2,000-strong complement dead or wounded. German-made Leopard 2 tanks and mine-clearing vehicles joined the Bradleys as wrecks in the fields west of Orekhov, having failed to breach the first line of Russian defenses. The reasons for this defeat can be boiled down to the role played by KORA in creating a false sense of confidence on the part of the officers and men of the 47th Brigade. Unfortunately, as the Ukrainians and their NATO masters found out, what works in a computer simulation does not automatically equate to battlefield success….

Logic dictates that any responsible use of the KORA simulation system would have predicted the failure of the 47th Brigade’s attack. According to The Washington Post, the officers of the 47th Brigade “planned their assaults and then let the [KORA] program show them the results – how their Russian enemies might respond, where they could make a breakthrough and where they would suffer losses.” The KORA simulation allowed the Ukrainian officers to coordinate their actions “to test how they’d work together on the battlefield.” Given that the Ukrainian force structure was insufficient to accomplish the mission-critical task of suppression, there was no chance for the Ukrainian forces to accomplish the actual assault requirements of a breaching operation – the destruction of enemy forces on the opposite side of the obstacle barrier being breached. The Ukrainians, however, came away from their KORA experience confident that they had crafted a winning plan capable of overcoming the Russian defenses in and around Orekhov.

Simulation models are only useful if they actually reflect the real situation. And if there is one thing we know about globohomo, it is that its servants believe that their imagination creates reality. Speaking as a game designer, one can safely predict that no simulation created by people who believe that a man can be a woman can be even remotely accurate.

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So Much for the Wunderwaffen

Ukrainian armored troops are less than keen about taking their Leopard tanks into battle:

Ukrainian tank crews have been faking malfunctions on their tanks to justify not going into combat against Russian forces, fellow soldiers operating German Leopards have told Der Spiegel magazine. The revelation was part of a frontline report published by the news outlet.

The magazine spoke to three German-trained Ukrainian troops who were among the crew of two Leopard 2A6 tanks provided to Kiev by the Bundeswehr.

The report cites a loader nicknamed Gutsik, who claimed that some crews fake technical malfunctions to avoid being sent to the frontline. He reportedly told the magazine that dodging an engagement altogether was better than entering combat only to pull out after the first shot.

Another said he didn’t blame those who are refusing.

“If they hit the turret, you’re a heap of ashes,” a man identified as Misha told Spiegel.

Remember, this is not a Russian report. It’s a German one directly quoting Ukrainian soldiers. So it’s not propaganda. I expect that NATO pilots, of every state including the USA, are even more determined to avoid flying in the teeth of Russia’s air defenses. What are F-16s supposed to do against air defense systems designed to shoot down planes two generations newer?

It would be like flying Sopwith Camels against Yakovlev Yak-9Us.

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A General’s Prediction

The divergence between Gen. Petraeus’s predictions for the Kiev counteroffensive and the apparent results does not bode well for NATO strategists.

Gen David Petraeus has said Ukraine’s counteroffensive is “very impressive” and can succeed, adding that the Ukrainians are “determined to liberate their country”.

On the counteroffensive, he said:

I think that this counteroffensive is going to be very impressive.

My sense is that they will achieve combined arms effects in other words, they will successfully carry out combined arms operations where you have engineers that are breaching the obstacles and diffusing the minefields and so forth; armour following right on through protected by infantry against anti-tank missiles; air defence keeping the Russians aircraft off them; electronic warfare jamming their radio networks; logistics right up behind them; artillery and mortars right out in front of them.

And most important of all … is that as the lead elements inevitably culminate after 72-96 hours, physically that’s about as far as you can go, and they’ll have taken losses … you have follow-on units that will push right on through and capitalise on the progress and maintain the momentum and I think that can get the entire Russian defence in that area moving, then I think you have other opportunities that will open up on the flanks as well.

It’s been a lot more than 72-96 hours. Not only are the NATO forces nowhere near Moscow, but they’ve essentially bounced off what has been described as “a wall of steel”, losing about one-third of their forces in the process.

Simplicius has turned out to be correct again. This is a “Schroedinger’s Offensive”, which is no longer an offensive, much less a “very impressive” one, but rather, a mere test, and mere recon in force. Never mind that the “in force” in this case amounted to a substantial percentage of the total available equipment.

No wonder the neoclowns are suddenly babbling about diplomacy and the need for negotiations.

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Waving the White Flag

The neoclowns are starting to push for diplomacy and a negotiated armistice in Ukraine in a new piece in Foreign Affairs entitled “An Unwinnable War”:

An entire new U.S. military command element, the Security Assistance Group–Ukraine, has been devoted to the aid and training mission, which is led by a three-star general with a staff of 300. Yet there is not a single official in the U.S. government whose full-time job is conflict diplomacy. Biden should appoint one, perhaps a special presidential envoy who can engage beyond ministries of foreign affairs, which have been sidelined in this crisis in nearly all relevant capitals. Next, the United States should begin informal discussions with Ukraine and among allies in the G-7 and NATO about the endgame.

In parallel, the United States should consider establishing a regular channel of communication regarding the war that includes Ukraine, U.S. allies, and Russia. This channel would not initially be aimed at achieving a cease-fire. Instead, it would allow participants to interact continually, instead of in one-off encounters, akin to the contact group model used during the Balkan wars, when an informal grouping of representatives from key states and international institutions met regularly. Such discussions should begin out of the public eye, as did initial U.S. contacts with Iran on the nuclear deal, signed in 2015.

These efforts might well fail to lead to an agreement. The odds of success are slim—and even if negotiations did produce a deal, no one would leave fully satisfied. The Korean armistice was certainly not seen as a triumph of U.S. foreign policy at the time it was signed: after all, the American public had grown accustomed to absolute victories, not bloody wars without clear resolution. But in the nearly 70 years since, there has not been another outbreak of war on the peninsula. Meanwhile, South Korea emerged from the devastation of the 1950s to become an economic powerhouse and eventually a thriving democracy. A postwar Ukraine that is similarly prosperous and democratic with a strong Western commitment to its security would represent a genuine strategic victory.

An endgame premised on an armistice would leave Ukraine—at least temporarily—without all its territory. But the country would have the opportunity to recover economically, and the death and destruction would end. It would remain locked in a conflict with Russia over the areas occupied by Moscow, but that conflict would play out in the political, cultural, and economic domains, where, with Western support, Ukraine would have advantages. The successful reunification of Germany, in 1990, another country divided by terms of peace, demonstrates that focusing on nonmilitary elements of the contestation can produce results. Meanwhile, a Russian-Ukrainian armistice would also not end the West’s confrontation with Russia, but the risks of a direct military clash would decrease dramatically, and the global consequences of the war would be mitigated.

Many commentators will continue to insist that this war must be decided only on the battlefield. But that view discounts how the war’s structural realities are unlikely to change even if the frontline shifts, an outcome that itself is far from guaranteed. The United States and its allies should be capable of helping Ukraine simultaneously on the battlefield and at the negotiating table. Now is the time to start.

There are a few problems here. First, the Egypt-Israel model cannot apply, because unlike in the Middle East, the US and its allies are co-belligerents in Ukraine. Therefore, they cannot expect Russia to accept them as anything but adversaries; the situation on the Korean Peninsula is a more relevant analogy. Second, the US and its allies not only permitted, but actively conspired with Ukraine in undermining the previous diplomatic efforts that resulted in the Minsk Accords.

Third, this analysis presumes material military weakness and lack of morale on the part of Russia that does not appear to be in evidence. While the inabilities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are now being recognized, the narrative of Russian military incapacity remains largely unchanged despite having been proven to be reliably wrong for the last eighteen months. While the writer recognizes that Ukraine is incapable of winning, he still doesn’t realize that the same is not true of Russia.

Fourth, there are zero indications that Russia has any interest in a diplomatic solution and a plethora of signs that Russia has absolutely no intention of letting Clown World off the hook in Ukraine or anywhere else in the world. If WWIII has, as I believe, already begun, it is not going to be averted by a belated interest in diplomacy on the part of the neoclowns.

But the article is certainly worth noting due to the way it informs us that the formerly triumphalist clowns now recognize that what they previously believed to be their inevitable victory is, at the very least, no longer imminent, and may not even be possible anymore.

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Why Clown World Fears Russia

The piece connecting the war in Ukraine to the Q campaign and the panic across Clown World appears to be the founder of Burisma Holdings, who is now believed to be “an asset of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service”:

Burisma Holdings founder Mykola Zlochevsky, who allegedly paid a total of $10 million in bribes to Joe and Hunter Biden in 2015 and 2016 in exchange for then-Vice President Joe Biden’s assistance in getting Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin fired, is believed to be an asset of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) by the United States intelligence community, according to a national security source speaking to RedState on condition of anonymity. The official said:

“The US intelligence community has a high degree of confidence in their assessment of Zlochevsky as SVR. This is not a new assessment; the intelligence community under Obama knew this, and Obama was briefed on it. Joe Biden and Victoria Nuland were briefed as well.”

In a June 2021 RedState exclusive story about the defection of Chinese counterintelligence official Dong Jingwei, it was reported that among the “terabytes” of data Jingwei brought with him to the United States was information related to “details of meetings US government officials had (perhaps unwittingly) with Chinese spies and members of Russia’s SVR.”

It was revealed by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) on Monday that the “foreign national” mentioned in an FD-1023 form by a confidential human source (CHS) not only claimed to have bribed Hunter and Joe Biden but possessed a total of 17 audio recordings of his conversations with them about the arrangement. He created the recordings as a sort of “insurance policy.” It was not clear whether the FBI had copies of the audio recordings or not.

GRASSLEY: “The foreign national who allegedly bribed Joe and Hunter Biden allegedly has audio recording of his conversation with them. 17 such recordings…15 audio recordings of phone calls between him and Hunter Biden…two audio recordings of phone calls between him and… pic.twitter.com/0QdUMEKhOR

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) June 12, 2023

Last week Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Anna Paulina Luna, and Nancy Mace said that the foreign national identified in the FD-1023 form is Zlochevsky.

This is, as AC has noted, potentially an extremely big deal. What it may signify is that Russia, and therefore China, have all the information that is necessary to expose and destroy Clown World, root and branch. Everything from the Holocaust and the Moon landings to the legitimacy of the Biden administration appears to be fully documented by Russian intelligence, which would mean that Vladimir Putin can unleash chaos throughout the West and undermine every Western government simply by providing the verifiable truth of post-WWII history to the people of Europe and America.

I’ve suspected as much since Putin made a very specific reference to “the Empire of Lies” and the neoclowns reacted in much the same way vampires do to the offer of a garlic-infused shower of holy water coming out of a silver waterspout in the shape of a cross. I also suspect that this may be the basis of the post-2015 “Trump-Russia collusion” narrative that has never made any sense whatsoever in the electoral context provided.

We can only hope and pray that the Russians, and their secret allies, will soon do us the service of telling the rest of us what they already know to be true. All Clown World ever had over Russia was the threat of the US military, and now that threat appears to have been exposed as one that is entirely empty.

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The Evacuation of Taiwan

The Biden regime is preparing for Americans to evacuate Taiwan before it unifies with the mainland.

The U.S. government is preparing evacuation plans for American citizens living in Taiwan, three sources told The Messenger.

The planning has been underway for at least six months and “it’s heated up over the past two months or so,” said a senior U.S. intelligence official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the planning.

The official said a “heightened level of tension” had driven the preparations. “It’s nothing you wouldn’t read in the news,” he told The Messenger. “Forces building up. China aligning with Russia on Ukraine.”

It’s probably not a coincidence that these preparations are being made now that the “largest air exercise in NATO history” has been launched just as the Ukrainian offensive has been halted and the Kiev regime is screaming for more air support.

An air deployment exercise billed as the biggest in NATO’s history and hosted by Germany got underway on Monday. The Air Defender 2023 exercise that is set to run through June 23 was long-planned but serves to showcase the alliance’s capabilities amid high tensions with Russia.

The first planes took off on Monday morning from airfields in northern Germany. Some 10,000 participants and 250 aircraft from 25 nations will respond to a simulated attack on a NATO member. The United States alone is sending 2,000 U.S. Air National Guard personnel and about 100 aircraft.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that NATO is finally going to take the war with Russia direct and hot. But it means they have the means to do so if their decision makers are bold enough to take the risk.

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